JSA, Incapacity Benefit and Depression

foolishqueen

Hello everyone,

I'm hoping someone on here will be bale to have some input into the situation my fiancee finds herself in.

Basically after giving birth to our son in December 2004, she began suffering from PND. Once her maternity leave ran out she was signed off sick. Once her SSP had expired, she was still being signed off sick and went on to IB for about 6 months.

However, in February this year after a lot of thought she decided to resign. The company she worked for had never been kind to her and put a lot of pressure on her to go back to work. Becuase she resigned she didn't continue seeing the doctor for sick notes, so in effecther IB stopped (in hindsight she should have carried on going to see her doctor).

In May of this year, after starting to feel better and finally getting the help she needed she decided to start looking for work again and so went to the Job Centre and applied for and got JSA.

Now here is where it gets tricky. She basically today recieved a P45 from the JC and after ringing them was told that her JSA had been stopped because her claim for payment of IB had been successful. The reason for this was the IB office would have continued to pay IB if she had sent in sick notes. She was supposed to attend a medical review in March, but could not go because of her depression. It was only in May after sending back the form in March about why she did not attend did they actually process this form, and the net result is if she sends in a sick note for Feb to May (when started to claim JSA) she will be paid back dated IB.

This brings us to the problem. The person he spoke to regarding her current claim for JSA has said that if she doesn't sned in a sick note for Feb to May, then they will back date her JSA to Feb thus meaning her eligibility for JSA will expire in August i.e. 6 months!

This to me sounds wrong. :mad: Had she been well since resigning why would they have to back date her JSA claim? Also, what if she had decided to be a stay at home mum and only decided to look for work in May anyway? It just sounds wrong to me.

We are going tot he doctors on Thurday to see about getting a back dated sick note. She wasn't well during the period in question but whether the doc will give a sick note, we just don't know.

Sorry for the essay. Any thoughts or insights would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

foolishqueen

Any ideas anyone?

Fran

Doctors can do backdated notes, I don't know how far back they can go though. A doctor should be understanding about depression so hopefully that will be ok. If not go to another doctor, the whole thing about depression is that people are unable to look after their affairs so well.